The subtitle of Simon Kuper’s book Chums is “How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over The UK” and he coins the term ‘Oxocracy’ to capture this phenomenon. Of 17 prime ministers from 1940 through to 2024, 13 were Oxford educated. Additionally, we may note that several were products of Eton, where, in Kuper’s words “they had been groomed for power since childhood”.
Chums: the dramatis personae
Three Johnsons appear in the book: Boris with great frequency, sister Rachel less so, and a bit part for brother Jo. David Cameron, who won the race to become PM, features greatly, along with, to a slightly lesser extent, Jacob Rees-Mogg – in Kuper’s words:
“An unmissable sight, a rail-thin teenager, promenading along Broad Street, dressed like a Victorian vicar, in a double-breasted suit with an umbrella.”
Dominic Cummings appears (ferociously hard-working) as do Michael Gove (at one point, one of a ‘five in a bed’ romp) and Liz Truss. So, these characters were all familiar with each other years before they reached Westminster/Whitehall.
On the Labour side at this time in Oxford, you could count on Keir Starmer, the two Miliband brothers and Ed Balls. We can thus start to populate the future front benches on both sides of the Commons.
An education in winging it
As an Oxford undergraduate, Simon Stevens – who went on to run the NHS between 2013 and 2021, later receiving a knighthood and soon after a life peerage – had a reputation as “Oxford’s most talented off-the-cuff tutorial faker”. ‘Winging it’ was routine in Oxford – the system at that time almost encouraged it, and bluffing your way through a tutorial was considered a serious art form.
On one occasion, Stevens got half-way through reading out his tutorial essay before his undergraduate tutorial partner blew his cover by revealing that Stevens was reading from a blank piece of paper.
The former arch-bluffer now sits on the cross benches in the Lords.
Oxford and the origins of Brexit
Possibly three ‘tributaries’ started the Brexit river running as a project. First, there had been the Bruges speech by Margaret Thatcher, in which she warned against a European superstate. This then gave scope for a small number of anti-Maastricht MPs (notably Bill Cash and Nicholas Ridley) to break cover as early Eurosceptics. But, in fact, a third, not insignificant, stream was already flowing in the form of anti-Europe activity undertaken by a handful of undergraduates – at Oxford.
Most prominent amongst these were Daniel Hannan and Patrick Robertson. These two, between them, set up the Oxford Campaign for an Independent Britain. Hannan is credited as having done a lot of the serious thinking (one of a minority of people who had actually read all the Maastricht Treaty). Britain’s relationship with the European common market rose as topic of discussion, marked by the Oxford Union holding a debate on the motion ‘The EU offers little of value to the UK’. Norman Tebbit proposed, whilst Ted Heath opposed. The motion passed by 108 votes – a significant straw in the wind.
At one juncture in his book, Kuper speculates that if Oxford had rejected Johnson, Gove, Rees-Mogg, Cummings, Hannan, etc., when they had applied for admission, we might not have had Brexit. Counterfactual history perhaps, but for the author to raise the possibility is an indication of just how influential this group of Oxford Tories were in getting Brexit over the line.
“Generation without tragedy”
The title of Kuper’s 10th chapter is “Generation without tragedy” and makes the salient point that the attitudes of undergraduates of the late 1980s towards European integration were not coloured as those of the previous generation of politicians were by searing wartime experiences.
Harold Macmillan, for example, had served in the first world war trenches as a young guards officer and had been wounded. He had served also in the second world war and appreciated the importance of keeping France and Germany at peace with each other. In 1975, following the referendum that kept the UK in the Common Market (67% for Remain), Macmillan was crossing Parliament Square in the company of Shirley Williams. A celebratory bonfire was burning and, recalling the horrors of war, the former PM turned to Williams and uttered just the two words: “Never again!”
In Thatcher’s first cabinet, five holders of the Military Cross sat around the table.
There was always a danger, then, that young opponents of an ever-deepening EU would significantly undervalue the peace dividend that Robert Schuman had in mind in setting up the European Coal and Steel Community, the forerunner of the European Common Market.
Johnson backs Leave – to get back at his rival
In 2019, Johnson climbed to the top of the greasy pole. It had been a matter of resentment that Cameron (Johnson’s junior at Eton) had beaten him to it, and possibly it was that resentment that caused Johnson to back Leave. He had hesitated on which way to jump, but here was a chance to scotch ‘Dave’.
In his autobiography, Politics on the Edge, Rory Stewart recounts his standing against Johnson in the contest to replace Theresa May. Stewart had been at both Eton and Oxford with Johnson and knew him for what he was. He writes:
“The centre of my campaign was against him. He seemed the only truly dangerous one of the candidates.”
Stewart was eliminated early on, whilst Johnson went on to win. That tells us all we need to know about the Tory Party membership that constituted the electorate.
Covid response put in the hands of ‘the Chums’
An early error in dealing with Covid was the attempt to avoid lockdowns, since shown to have cost thousands of deaths. In the emergency, Cummings (essentially running things!) chose to bypass normal civil service procurement processes and enlist ‘the Chums’. Kuper writes:
“Much of Britain’s pandemic response was routed through people who had been at university with Johnson.”
Almost all results were a disaster. Failed attempts to source serviceable PPE ended up wasting £8.7bn according to Department for Health and Social Security official accounts.
Dido Harding, “an Oxford PPEist chum of Cameron’s” was put in charge of the NHS Test and Trace. No other candidate was considered; she was just handed the job. Despite money thrown at it, Test and Trace made little positive impact. Two judges later ruled her appointment illegal, which leads us to the biggest irony – Harding is married to Tory MP John Penrose, who held the official post of ‘Prime minister’s anti-corruption champion’. You couldn’t make it up.
To balance things, we should note the great success of the Vaccine Task Force, headed up by Kate Bingham, contemporary of Johnson and Gove, and married to MP Jesse Norman (Eton and Oxford).
“What is to be done?”
If you want to be angry about the state of UK politics and the damage caused over a number of decades by Tory politicians, then read the first 17 chapters of this book.
Reflecting on reaction to his first edition, Kuper decided to go back to Oxford University to see if anything had changed. The good news embedded in the final chapter “What is to be done?” is that much has changed – and very much for the better.
Page 202 has a table of statistics that show improvements – all the way through. Hence, for example, between 2017 and 2021 the proportion of admissions to Oxford from state schools rose from 58.2% to 68.2%. At the same time the proportion of candidates accepted from socio-economically disadvantaged areas rose from 10.6% to 17.3%. And so on …
A student from the 18th century would have recognised the teaching styles and methods of assessment used to educate and assess Johnson and his contemporaries. These have now been re-vamped and improved. There is now less scope to ‘wing it’ and a greater need to have depth of learning. Essays must have footnoted references!
A book with an enjoyable light touch
I managed to keep my blood pressure levels under control and hence enjoyed this book. The anecdotage is excellent, and the touch is light. The book has a clear unifying theme, that this “tiny caste of Conservatives” arrived at Oxford with a sense of entitlement that the Oxford experience only reinforced. Our politics suffered in consequence.
In Oxford terms, the book may not be ‘alpha plus’ but for me it does score pretty highly, certainly much better than a ‘beta minus’, and I warmly recommend it to readers.
